Table Tennis: India sweep cadet titles at Guatemala Open

New Delhi - India’s cadet boys and girls completely dominated the Guatemala Junior Table Tennis Open in Guatemala City winning the gold in the team events.

The combination of Birdie Boro and Anirban Ghosh representing India ‘A’ won the cadet boys title, with the trio of Sreeja Akuka, Harsha Vardhini Calange Ravichandran and Sagarika Mukherjee joining forces to secure the girls’ team gold on Friday.

Occupying the top seeded place in the draw, they accounted for the Ecuador pairing of Eunice Galvez and Natalie Paredes in the semi-finals 3-0 before recording a similar victory against the India ‘B’ Team comprising Aishwarya Pathak and Moumita Das, who ended up with the silver.

However, for India ‘A’ in the cadet boys’ event life was more testing, particularly in the final where they took on India ‘B’ comprising Arjun Ghosh and Larlin Puia.

Arjun Ghosh beat both Birdie Boro (11-6, 11-7, 11-8) and Anirban Ghosh (13-11, 9-11, 11-6, 11-9) but that was all India ‘B’ could do. Larlin Puia suffered defeats at the hands of Anirban Ghosh (11-9, 11-5, 11-3) and Birdie Boro (11-6, 6-11, 12-10, 11-8) with the doubles being secured by Anirban Ghosh and Birdie Boro in three straight games (11-5, 11-9, 11-5).